How would you like a job that pays $12,000 a year, where 1 percent of the workforce is killed annually and hundreds of others are seriously maimed? I didn’t think so. You would probably take a pass on working for Titan Corporation (now part of L-3) as an interpreter for the U.S. armed forces in Iraq. The L-3 website promises that “as a member of the L-3 Communications team, you will be exposed to the most exciting career adventures situated on the cutting edge of technology.” Alas, it’s not just the technology that is cutting edge. The roadside bombs cut pretty deeply, too.
We read in the Los Angeles Times about the sad fate of translators in Iraq. There are about 8,000 in all. Over the five year period from 2003 to 2008, 360 were killed. Those who were lucky enough to survive were often shipped to Jordan for treatment. The workers comp benefits fell under the Defense Base Act and were administered by AIG, among others. (See our previous blog here.) According to some of the wounded, they were offered a stark choice: accept a proposed settlement (which absolved the insurer of any future costs) or be shipped back to Iraq, where retaliation and death awaited former employees of the U.S.
The Times article describes the life of Malek Hadi, an Iraqi national who lost a leg and several fingers in a roadside bombing. He now struggles to survive in Arlington, Texas. At first, he was unable to collect any benefits:
Internal AIG documents indicate that a claims examiner withheld Hadi’s benefits in an effort to force him to accept the lump sum. Hadi was “clearly entitled” to benefits, a different AIG examiner wrote in a memo dated August 2008. The company had not paid because the previous examiner “was trying to get the claimant to decide whether to settle his claim,” the memo said.
Malik now receives the maximum monthly disability benefit – a whopping $612 per month. He has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome, but AIG has refused to cover any treatments. Perhaps they are waiting for a second opinion from the company shrink? Meanwhile, Malik will just have to deal with it!
Former insiders at AIG describe how the game is played:
“If you’re missing one piece of documentation, you got denied,” said Colleen Driscoll, who oversaw the handling of interpreters’ insurance claims for L-3. “These guys get murdered coming and going to work, and AIG turns them down because they don’t have a letter from the insurgents.”
Driscoll, a former United Nations refugee official, left L-3 in 2007. She said the cause was a dispute with company executives over treatment of injured interpreters.
She and another former L-3 official, Jennifer Armstrong, said their experience suggested that 10% to 20% of the company’s Iraqi workers who should have received benefits were denied.
AIG stock is currently trading at the equivalent of about $1.40 a share. It would be nice to think that this was the market’s judgment on the way things are being handled in Iraq, but that, of course, has nothing to do with it. The market, not exactly known for its humanitarian concerns, is punishing AIG for financial – not ethical – sins. Indeed, the market might well approve of the way the injured, the maimed and the dead are being squeezed in this mockery of a benefits program. After all, indemnity and medical expenditures are being kept as low as possible and that can only help support AIG’s battered bottom line.
